4.03.17: Your morning briefing

Welcome to the PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Starbucks experiments with 'no checkout': Starbucks is one of the big success stories in mobile technology, handling a large portion of its transactions via its mobile, adding virtual assistant technology and at times suffering an overload due to the popularity of its order ahead app. The coffee chain is trying to take the next step, testing a "mobile only" concept in its Seattle headquarters. Reuters reports Starbucks will turn one of its internal office cafes into a strictly mobile operation, and will feature a different design and a window to view staff preparing orders for the building, which employs about 5,000 people. The idea is similar to the Amazon Go "no cashier" concept, though the technology is different: Starbucks is relying on its mobile app and Amazon is using sensors for contactless checkout. Each company is using a successful part of its tech-driven branding to experiment with a store that has minimal staff and no employees to accept payments, hoping Seattle's local technology culture will embrace the concept. Amazon Go's test, which is also for internal staff, has not gone well so far as the Amazon pushes Go's formal debut back while it works out technology bugs.

Bloomberg News

ANZ's voice: Fresh of off adopting touchscreen technology for fundraising, ANZ Bank is removing its ceiling for voice authorized payments. According to Computerworld, ANZ will allow vocal biometric authentication for payments above the prior $1,000 ceiling. The bank concluded the method is safer, noting a person's voice has up to ten times as many security points as fingerprints, adding consumers have also shown more comfort with voice than other forms of biometric security. The technology is provided by Nuance Communications, and ANZ will shortly begin a test with internal staff via the bank's Grow by ANZ mobile app. A full deployment is expected by the middle of 2017.

A boost for blockchain from Japan: The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi has joined Ripple's Global Payments Steering Group. Cryptocoin News reports Japan's largest bank will join other banks such as Bank of America, CIBC, Santander, Westpac, Standard Chartered and RBC in building the standards and rules for a global payments network on the Ripple network, addressing delays, cost, governance and transparency. Ripple provides blockchain technology, which is used to support virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. The technology has recently become a favored option to power international payments with less time and overhead. Banks are also considering other uses for blockchain, such as trading, back office management and general security.

Citi's Hong Kong Hub: Banks are getting more aggressive in their outreach to developers to build new payments and financial services technology, an effort that's become global in scale. Hubbis reports Citigroup is making its API available in Hong Kong as part of a challenge that will give participants the tools to build new uses for transfers, P-to-P payments, marketing, investments, security and account management. By opening their technology to outside sources, large payment and financial services companies hope to spot new innovation first. Visa, for example, opened an innovation hub in London in February.

Traditional POS Systems vs. Mobile Start-ups Point of Sale News • Nicole Apostle Can we all just get along? It’s a brand new retail world. We know it, in part, because of all the buzzwords that usually accompany this kind of dramatic shift. “Omni-channel” is one thrown around quite a bit these days.

How Do Consumers Really Feel About 2017's Digital Trends? [Infographic] Hubspot Inbound Internet Marketing Blog • Joel Stein As we approach the year's second quarter, Google is already returning over 46,600 results for “digital trends 2017.” And if you’re in the digital marketing space, there seems to be an unspoken rule that you must always have an opinion on what...

7 ways AI is changing paymentsArtificial intelligence is steadily making its way through the payments and financial services world. The technology's usefulness for fraud detection is clear, but there are other areas where AI can have an impact.

PayPal seeks graceful retreat in the subprime credit businessAt the height of the panic in late 2008, PayPal Holdings made a counterintuitive move: It entered the subprime lending business. And disproving the naysayers, the payments giant built loans of last resort to online shoppers into a lucrative business.

The increasing adoption of virtual card payments by accounts payable departments has created an unex­pected complication for suppliers: more friction in the processing, posting and reconciliation of payments and receivables. The root of the problem is that most suppliers rely on a manual approach to processing e-mailed virtual card payments. Suppliers are forced to balance their organization’s need for operational efficiency and control with rising customer demand to pay with a virtual card. But a new breed of tech­nology enables suppliers to process virtual card payments straight-through, addressing the needs of buyers and suppliers. This paper details the growth of electronic business-to-business (B2B) payments, shows how manual approaches to processing virtual card payments cause friction in accounts receivables, describes a way to process virtual card payments straight-through, and highlights the benefits of friction­less payments.